Geoffrey Jenkins - Southtrap

The men dodged out from behind the foc's'le head where they had been sheltering and watched their moment. Gripping the lifelines as the main deck flooded from a sea which burst inboard, they clumped clumsily across the deck in heavy boots and sou'wes-ters to the protection of the life-nets I'd rigged below the weather shrouds. As she rolled to port again, up they went into the rigging with astonishing agility. They would have to fist the thrashing canvas into quiescence: Botany Bay had only single topsails, not the more modern double sails, and their bigger area meant twice the muscle-power.

One of the men scrambling up the main shrouds stopped, pointed, and shouted something at me. His words were snatched away by the wind. I followed the direction of his hand. There was nothing but an endless succession of racing hills of water. Then the stern lifted, which gave me a wider sight of the horizon.

I stood rooted at what I saw.

The approaching snow squall looked like a destroyer's smoke-screen laid across the face of the west. Reaching out fingers towards the labouring ship was a millrace of clouds scudding low almost to mast-height. The squall was still about five kilometres off and travelling like a bullet.

But ahead of it was the thing which froze my blood.

It was a monster comber with a long overhanging crest of dense white reaching for the ship like an outrider of the main body of water.

No ship's stern would ever rise to that.

Botany Bay was already squirming down a roller, away, as if she realized what was coming.

I whipped the megaphone to my lips. I gave one of the rarest orders at sea.

'Stand by for your lives!'

That killer rudder wouldn't take it either. No two men could hold its rebound, even with its special kicking tackles.

I turned the megaphone on Ullmann.

'Ullmann! Get to the wheel! Forget that bloody gun!'

He stood hesitating.

I must have sounded like one of the Furies riding the gale when I re-directed my words at him.

'Ullmann! Lend a hand! Get to that wheel! The whole ocean's coming up astern! Run, man, run!'

He must have been convinced by my urgency, for he went across the lurching deck to Wegger, passed the strap of his machine-pistol round his arm, and seized the for'ard spokes of the double wheel.

The young man with the blacksmith's shoulders glanced astern over his shoulder. Many a better man than he had been killed in the Southern Ocean doing that.

'Keep your eyes front!' I shouted above the wind's roar. 'Don't let her broach to! Keep her head steady!'

Then I knew I might still help the ship, if the men now in the rigging could manage in time.

'Set the main tops'l staysail!' I shouted through the megaphone.

The small triangular sail, which would be high above the swamping effect of the waves as the ship fell into the trough, might just carry her forward enough to ride out the monster when it struck.

I didn't have time for anything else.

I threw a bight of rope round the shrouds, lashed myself fast. It was impossible to tell whether the substance which machine-gunned my face was snow, hail, rain, ice or spray. It was equally impossible to hear anything. The wind was hurling itself over the starboard quarter with a roaring, moaning sound which changed to a higher pitch when it struck the rigging. The wild seas smashing against the hull under-wrote the din.

Then the great roller struck.

One moment the main deck, poop and helm were visible, the next all I could make out were three masts sticking out of a cauldron of water. I was punched in the back, but the rope held. Water poured over me as if I had been a surfer who had come unstuck from his board. Botany Bay heeled right over, until the main hatch disappeared. The lee main yardarm went deep into the sea.

I caught a glimpse of the young man with the blacksmith's shoulders being thrown loose and against the for'ard part of the double wheel. He spread-eagled his arms, looking like one of the waxworks figures below stripped for flogging on a grating. The killer wheel jerked again and he was flung head over heels into the scuppers. The breaking wave took him overboard. There was nothing I could do to save him. Ullmann's face 'was purple as the veins stood out as he attempted with Bent to hold the ship from broaching to. The driving spray was too thick even to see what was happening to the men on the foc's'le head.

'Don't let her head come up!' I tried to yell above the din to the helmsmen.

No human power would ever bring Botany Bay upright again.

Her stern lifted, lifted, and the bow went down down.

She tobogganed into the trough.

It cut off wind pressure from the reefed tops'ls holding her listed as surely as if they'd blown clean out of their bolt-ropes. From the rigging high above there was a clap like thunder. The small tops'l staysail blew away like an errant albatross's wing.

Then from the maelstrom on the main deck I saw the top of the main hatch start to emerge; two lifeboats lashed to it were gone. We'd secured the motor-launch aft the mainmast on skids; now I saw it break clear of the foam — intact.

Botany Bay was making a great fight for it. She possessed an unsuspected buoyancy. The lee ports of the poop deck clanged as hundreds of tons of water poured overboard.

Then I spotted the young helmsman. He was sprawled out, floating mizzen-yard high, within three metres of the deck. It might as well have been three kilometres. His arms were reaching out helplessly for safety and his mouth was wide.

Now Botany Bay's mainyard emerged from the spume and she came on to an even keel and started to give that long majestic roll to recovery. The lee poop deck flooded again at the movement and scooped up the young man out of the sea as neatly as if it had been intended. He crawled across the deck and locked his arms round the binnacle.

'Get back to the wheel!' I shouted. 'Back, man, we'll make it still!'

The ship lifted as she began her ascent to the crest, shaking her decks clear of hundreds of tons of water like a terrier shaking itself after a bath. Unknown objects washed astern and thumped against the break of the poop.

If Botany Bay managed to pull herself back to life again, there was only one course left open for me — to heave her to and ride out the storm and give her time to lick her wounds. For wounded she was, as I could feel by the lethargic drag under my feet, which meant that huge quantities of water had poured in below through smashed hatches and skylights. The patched-up leak in the bow had probably broken out afresh. Muscle-power alone would have to rid her bilges of the water — Botany Bay had no mechanical pumps.

Now Botany Bay was straining as she climbed wearily out of the trough. Miraculously, the masts were still in her. The foremast seemed askew to me. I saw men still clinging in the rigging where I'd sent them to reef the topsails.

I ripped off my securing rope and swung myself up to check astern. There couldn't be another wave like that. There was only a plunging, rolling, racing, raging mass of hillocks of water pursuing the injured ship.

I regained the deck and shouted, 'All hands! All hands! Stand by!'

Orders were a good thing for a stunned crew. It stopped them from thinking about the death they'd escaped.

I hadn't given a thought to Wegger. Now I found him beside me.

'Shotton! What are you doing now?'

I rounded on him. 'I'm going to heave her to. Put her under a storm trysail and try and fix things. We're lucky to still be afloat and not upside down…'

He pulled the Luger from his weatherproofing. It seemed a ridiculous token of force after what the Southern Ocean had just thrown at us. Part nerves, part reaction made me laugh in his face.

'Don't play kids' games, Wegger. If you want to go on living, let me handle this!'